The judge, James Mahan, raised eyebrows by commenting that the 33-paragraph story at issue was primarily informational as opposed to being creative.

Wendy Davis, writing at Online Media Daily, talked to David Ardia of the Citizen Media Law Project. He said the story at issue was creative in that it was an investigative piece involving multiple document reviews and interviews with multiple sources.

Another frequent commentator on Righthaven, Mike Masnick at techdirt.com, wrote that the ruling "spells trouble for Righthaven, which would lose the entire basis for its legal campaign and business model for the vast majority of its cases."

At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which participated in the case by providing a friend of the court expert, Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl commented in a blog post that Mahan's forthcoming written order "will help set a persuasive precedent for other copyright troll cases."

"The copyright troll's business model is to search for blogs and websites that include a newspaper's material, acquire the right to sue on particular articles from the paper and then file a lawsuit without any prior notice to the defendant. Righthaven seeks the maximum damages under the Copyright Act as well as control over the domain name, but is willing to settle for four-figure sums that seem calculated to be less than the cost of defense. Meanwhile, the actual articles that Righthaven sues over remain available for no charge on the newspaper website," Opsahl wrote.

The complaint against Fiato alleged he has a "Hollywood goodfella" blog that focuses on mob activity around the country and displayed without authorization Review-Journal columns and stories about mafia activity in Las Vegas.

U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning Righthaven can try to revive the suit if it desires.

Another Righthaven suit against Ronald Baxter, Buy Dog Beds and TEB Media was dismissed without prejudice Monday by Navarro for the same reason. That lawsuit involved a Review-Journal story on a slain store clerk that allegedly was posted on the www.buydogbeds.org website.